The most important and democratic innovation of Egypt's parliamentary elections that began on Monday is that we don't know who will win. We can probably assume that the Muslim Brotherhood will win much of the vote, but in contrast to Egyptian elections over the past 60 years, today there's no "ruling party" that was always the sure winner.

In many ways, Egypt now resembles a newly formed state that is trying to sketch out a map of its political forces on a blank page. This map will determine the character of the state, parliament's authority and the power of the next president.

This sense of renewal became clear in on Monday's huge voter turnout, the most important seal of approval that can be bestowed on these elections and the government that will emerge from them. Hope also stems from the large number of candidates and the number of new political parties that have sprung up this year, including the Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party.

For now, the various movements and parties are divided among four major blocs. One is the National Democratic Alliance for Egypt, which includes diverse movements ranging from the Freedom and Justice Party to the left-wing socialists. The Islamic bloc, meanwhile, includes all the Salafist movements that seek to set up a theocratic Islamic state. This bloc has said it will cooperate with the Muslim Brotherhood, but it isn't clear that the Brotherhood wants to cooperate with this more radical group.

The third bloc calls itself Completing the Revolution Alliance; it's made up of most of the protest movements that developed before and during the revolution. These are mainly movements of young people that are likely to join one of the other blocs at some point. The fourth bloc comprises secular and liberal parties, including the Free Egyptians Party, the left-wing Tagammu party and the social democrats.

There are also several independent parties that have chosen not to join a bloc, including both religious and socialist parties as well as veteran opposition parties like Al-Wasat and Wafd.

It's doubtful that these blocs will remain in their current set-up as the election process moves forward, ending on January 4 with another two rounds of voting. After that there will be elections for the upper house of parliament, which will continue until March. It's even possible that after the partial result from the round that ends on Tuesday, we'll start seeing new political constellations.

Once the elections are over, two serious challenges await the new parliament: forming the next government and drawing up a new Egyptian constitution. Expect an explosive political struggle over the powers to be granted the next president, who is likely to be elected only in June, and over the status of religion and state.

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Regardless of who wins the Muslim Brotherhood has been brought into
Egyptian society with open arms as if it could lead a peaceful
democracy. Nothing good is coming out of Egypt (today). In truth, the
only REAL hope is that the Arabs themselves deal with their extremists
in a way that will really secure the lives of other peace loving Arabs.
Unfortunately this desperately needed confrontation has not occurred (yet).

It's a complicated situation in Egypt but very useful. It reveals that
the youths revolutions are a sham by pretending they are 99%, etc. They
are of course, nothing like it but quite the opposite: in Egypt they are
one or two millions out of a population of 81 million! What they are has
been well described by The Economist as "a body without head".
What they want is NOT the will of the people but just of their own
pretensions only. This should never be accepted instead of going to a
vote by the entire nation, which they naturally fear. The same in Israel
and every other place where a group of people pretend they represent
everybody That's how Hitler came to power ...

It seems that every commentator forgets that 80% of the egyptian
population are analphabetic peasants who will cast naturally their vote
for the islamic parties which for them represent the old and solid
traditions. Those voters will certainly not vote for young liberals of
the facebook generation. Now we can understand the wrath of the young
demonstrators in Cairo: they know what will come from those elections
once the count of the peasants will be known. OK, they want democracy,
but not that kind of democracy where the right to vote is given to
uneducated rustic peasants. Here is and will be the real problem of Egypt!

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